Newsletter Digest
Anthropic Accidentally Leaks ‘Claude Mythos’ AI Details
Details of Anthropic’s next flagship AI system, Claude Mythos, surfaced this week after a CMS configuration error left launch materials in a publicly accessible data store. The leaked draft blog described the model as sitting in a new “Capybara” tier above the existing Opus class, both larger and more expensive to run. Anthropic flagged the model as being far ahead of any other AI system in cyber capabilities, warning it could help hackers outpace defenders. Anthropic confirmed to Fortune that a new general-purpose model with meaningful advances in reasoning, coding, and cybersecurity is currently being tested. The leak drew comparisons to OpenAI’s earlier Q* and Strawberry-era rumors.
Source: The Rundown AI
Physical Intelligence Eyes $1B Round at $11B+ Valuation for Robot Brains
Physical Intelligence, a two-year-old San Francisco lab founded by ex-Google DeepMind scientists, is in talks to raise roughly $1 billion at a valuation north of $11 billion, according to Bloomberg. The rumored round would nearly double the $5.6 billion valuation the startup achieved in a $600 million round just four months ago. The company is building AI foundation models to control general-purpose robots capable of tasks from household chores to industrial work. Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and Lightspeed Venture Partners are reportedly participating, alongside existing investors Thrive Capital and Lux Capital. A successful close would make it one of the most heavily funded companies in the general-purpose robotics race.
Source: The Rundown Robotics
Iran War Disrupts Global Aluminum Supply Chain
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps attacked two major aluminum producers in US-allied nations over the weekend, targeting Emirates Global Aluminium in Abu Dhabi and Aluminum Bahrain (Alba), home to the world’s largest aluminum smelter. EGA reported significant damage and employee injuries, while Alba is still assessing damage after already suspending 19% of its production capacity due to Strait of Hormuz shipping disruptions. India’s Hindalco Industries also invoked force majeure clauses on customer contracts due to war-related gas supply disruptions. Under normal conditions, the Middle East produces about 9% of global aluminum supply. The London Metal Exchange benchmark shows aluminum prices are up about 4% since the conflict began on February 28.
Source: Morning Brew
Eli Lilly Strikes $2.75B Deal for AI-Discovered Drug Pipeline
Eli Lilly made a $2.75 billion deal with Hong Kong-based Insilico Medicine, a startup that uses AI to accelerate drug discovery. Insilico will receive $115 million up front and can earn the full deal value if drugs it produces reach regulatory and sales milestones, plus royalties. Lilly gets exclusive rights to sell an Insilico-developed GLP-1 drug for diabetes, per the Financial Times. The deal highlights a trend of American drug companies leveraging China’s significant research investments and lower trial costs. Chen Yu, founder of biotech firm TCGX, told CNBC that through licensing, companies can get clinical proof of concept in China before bringing drugs to the US for expensive later-stage development.
Source: Morning Brew, The Rundown AI
Houthis Enter Iran War as 2,500 US Marines Deploy to Middle East
Yemen’s Houthi forces launched missiles at Israel on Saturday, marking their first direct participation in the Iran war. The same day, US Central Command confirmed that 2,500 Marines trained in amphibious landings arrived in the Middle East aboard the USS Tripoli. In a Financial Times interview, President Trump said his preferred tactic in Iran would be to “take the oil,” comparing it to US actions in Venezuela, and mused about seizing Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil terminal in the Persian Gulf. According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump is also weighing the possibility of using a military operation to extract 1,000 pounds of uranium from Iran. Pakistan also announced it would host US-Iran talks.
Source: Morning Brew
Anthropic Wins Federal Injunction Against Trump Administration
Anthropic won a federal injunction blocking the Trump administration’s supply-chain-risk designation against the company. The judge called the designation “classic illegal First Amendment retaliation.” The ruling represents a significant legal victory for the AI safety company amid ongoing tensions between the tech industry and the current administration. The case has been closely watched as a bellwether for how the government can use regulatory tools against AI companies. The outcome could set precedent for how supply-chain security designations are applied to domestic tech firms going forward, particularly those engaged in policy advocacy.
Source: The Rundown AI
WSJ Reveals Decade-Long Feud Between Altman and Amodei
The Wall Street Journal published a deep dive into the personal grudges and power struggles between Sam Altman and Dario Amodei that trace back to a San Francisco group house in 2016. Dario and Daniela Amodei worked at OpenAI before founding Anthropic, with the report detailing early conflicts with co-founder Greg Brockman. Brockman reportedly once proposed selling AGI to UN Security Council nuclear powers, a proposal Dario considered extreme. The WSJ also reported that Altman accused the Amodeis of plotting against him to the board, then denied it when confronted. The rivalry between the two leaders continues to shape the trajectory of two of the most important AI companies.
Source: The Rundown AI
NASA Artemis II Moon Mission Launch Window Opens Wednesday
After years of delays and more than $44 billion spent, the launch window for NASA’s Artemis II mission will open Wednesday evening. If conditions are right, four astronauts will blast toward the moon, travel around it, and return to Earth in a mission lasting about 10 days. If conditions are not favorable, additional launch windows will be available each day through April 6. The mission represents the first crewed lunar flight since the Apollo era and a critical step toward establishing a sustained human presence on and around the moon. Artemis II will test life-support systems and navigation capabilities needed for future lunar surface missions.
Source: Morning Brew
LimX’s ‘Luna’ Humanoid Walks the Catwalk at Alibaba Festival
Shenzhen startup LimX Dynamics debuted Luna, its new feminine humanoid robot, at Alibaba’s Taobao Influencer Festival, where it performed a full catwalk strut complete with hip-swaying movement and an illusion-turn spin. LimX positioned Luna as a public-facing performer rather than a factory bot, emphasizing lifestyle aesthetics and expressive movement designed for stages. The reveal comes just a month after LimX’s $200 million Series B round, aimed at scaling manufacturing and supporting its new COSA OS platform. Luna is part of a broader Chinese push to turn humanoid robots into consumer-facing entertainers and brand activation tools rather than purely industrial labor.
Source: The Rundown Robotics
Snail-Like Robot Designed to Crawl Through Gut and Fight Cancer
Researchers at the University of Manchester secured nearly £1 million ($1.3 million) in UK funding to build microbots that crawl through the gut like snails and deposit chemotherapy directly into colorectal tumors. The devices are made from peptide-based bionanomaterials engineered to mimic snail slime’s viscoelastic properties. Once on target, they anchor at tumor sites and release drugs on cue, guided by external magnetic fields. The team plans to build a multiscale digital twin of both the robot and gut tissue to stress-test designs before patient trials. Beyond colorectal cancer, the researchers see potential applications in targeted drug delivery across other organs.
Source: The Rundown Robotics
Exoskeleton Links Violinists’ Arms for Synchronized Playing
Italian researchers published a study in Science Robotics showing that linking violinists’ bowing arms through lightweight exoskeletons can tighten their timing and ensemble precision. Professional violinists strapped the devices onto their bowing arms, and pairs of players were linked so that motion data from one arm generated subtle, bidirectional forces on the other in real time. When timing drifted, the exoskeleton nudged arms back into sync, measurably improving coordination. Most musicians felt unexplained forces but did not realize the cues came from their partner’s body. The researchers say the same closed-loop system could drive rehab devices where therapists and patients move through linked exoskeletons.
Source: The Rundown Robotics
Google Expands Live Translate Feature to iOS
Google expanded the rollout of its Live Translate feature to iOS, turning any pair of headphones into a real-time interpreter across more than 70 languages. The feature uses on-device AI models to provide near-instantaneous translation of spoken language, making it accessible to iPhone users for the first time. Live Translate works with standard Bluetooth headphones and does not require specialized hardware. The expansion represents Google’s push to make AI-powered translation ubiquitous across platforms and devices, building on its long-standing investment in natural language processing and the Google Translate ecosystem.
Source: The Rundown AI
Zillow’s ‘Preview’ Pre-Listing Feature Gains Momentum
Zillow’s recently launched “Preview” feature, which lets participating brokerages show homes to potential buyers as pre-listings before they hit the market, has rapidly expanded since its March 17 debut. Five brokers including Keller Williams and Remax were part of the initial launch, and 24 more firms have since joined. In response, competitors Homes.com, Realtor.com, and ComeHome.com launched their own pre-market offerings. The catch: many deals require brokerages to enter exclusivity agreements, meaning homebuyers who want to see everything available will need to check multiple platforms. The trend mirrors the fragmentation seen in the streaming entertainment industry.
Source: Morning Brew
xAI Co-Founder Ross Nordeen Departs
Ross Nordeen, one of xAI’s original co-founders, reportedly left the company this week, making him the last of the original 11 co-founders to depart besides Elon Musk himself. The departure comes as xAI continues to build out its Grok AI models and compete with OpenAI and Anthropic for dominance in the AI industry. Nordeen’s exit follows a pattern of early leadership departures from Musk’s AI venture, which launched in 2023 with ambitious goals to understand the nature of the universe. The company recently raised significant funding at a high valuation but continues to face scrutiny over its corporate culture and leadership stability.
Source: The Rundown AI
US Lawmakers Move to Ban Chinese Humanoid Robots in Government
US lawmakers introduced a bipartisan bill that would bar federal agencies from using Chinese-made humanoid robots, citing national security and data privacy concerns. The legislation comes as Chinese robotics companies rapidly scale production and expand globally. In related industry news, Chinese industrial robot maker Shenzhen Inovance Technology hired Bank of America and Morgan Stanley for a Hong Kong share sale that could raise up to $2 billion. Meanwhile, AGIBOT announced it has rolled out its 10,000th humanoid, doubling output in just three months as it races to scale mass production and real-world deployments across factory and service environments.
Source: The Rundown Robotics
Apple Celebrates 50th Anniversary With Cupertino Event
Apple is wrapping up weeks of worldwide celebrations marking its 50th anniversary with a major event at its Cupertino headquarters this week on Wednesday. Over the past couple of weeks, the company has hosted events around the globe to commemorate the milestone. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman hinted that Paul McCartney could headline the finale event. The anniversary marks half a century since Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne founded Apple in a garage in Los Altos, California, transforming it from a hobbyist computer maker into the world’s most valuable company, with a market capitalization that has reached as high as $3 trillion.
Source: Morning Brew
US Allows Russian Oil Tanker to Enter Cuba Despite Blockade
The US reportedly allowed a Russian oil tanker named the Anatoly Kolodkin, carrying 650,000 barrels of Urals crude, to enter Cuba despite the oil blockade that has been in place since January to pressure the Maduro-aligned nation. While the reason for the exception is unknown, blocking the tanker would likely have raised tensions between Russia and the US. The blockade has worsened Cuba’s energy crisis, causing multiple power outages. Doctors interviewed by the San Juan Daily Star said the oil crisis was leading to rapidly deteriorating clinic conditions and preventable deaths. Trump told reporters he had “no problem” with the tanker because Cuba has “to survive.”
Source: Morning Brew
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